oh, my gosh, serenity...that first one looks like he has a hunk of wood for a beak...very funky, and absurdly beautiful...and the little white wonder...with the beautiful blue makeup..holding a feather!! Delicate, pure beauty, on a chain saw...even if it ISN"T a chain saw, forever now it will be...lol...and Simple, that grey is fantasic...Mark-A..what a wonderful capture..

I am going to back up and look at all of these...wonderful wonderful, albeit not a waddle in sight..still loving it.

Hello everyone!
This weekend I went to a very, VERY beautiful city in Brazil called Campos do Jordao. It is an mountain city with lots of beautiful landscapes and wildlife and I could take some pictures of our beloved feathered friends there too.
The EXIF data can be retrieved aty my Flickr.

I took most of those with a 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS USM attached with a Kenko Pro300 Teleconverter.

Brazilian Falcon:

Blue Arara (parrot)

We call this fellow "Joao de Barro" (Muddy John) because it builds his home using mud.

Lunch time!! Yummy!!

Black Bird

Hope you like it!
PP was only Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness and some crops.
C&C will be appreciated

More info on Flickr, just click the pic. I would have actually liked to have shot wide open for that famous beercan bokeh, and shoot at a lower ISO than 400, but experience told me that CA would be a problem. Surprisingly, it did rather well at f5.6 which was something of a compromise. Lighting was kind of poor because it was shaded. I have more pics, but don't have the time to develop/salvage them right now. Some were better than others.

Thanks! I honestly thought I was going to see nothing but crows, pigeons, and squirrels. Although there is this albino squirrel that I wouldn't have minded getting some pictures of. The last thing I expected to see on my walk was a falcon. Kind of made my day.

WOW!! Now THAT'S a really nice photo, csrussell! Sharp as a tack, great colors, great contrast and a pretty nice blur of the background. If it were mine, I would print that for sure. Congratulations!
Any PP on the picture or is it "right off the camera"?

Hey westcoast... How much did you crop? It looks like you cropped it so much that it lost a lot of its clarity... But I like it for some reason... makes it actually look like our flying friend is REALLY high up!